Scarlet Snow
by N3k0
Summary: The will to power lies in the heart of every Dovah. Thirteen years in isolation separate Scarlet from her bloody childhood. Can one with the soul of a dragon ever overcome her true nature?
1. Chapter 1: Setting Out

**Scarlet Snow**

Chapter One: Setting Out

By: Nekhs

* * *

Scarlet spared the room one last glance, shifting the weight of her pack across her shoulders.

Thirteen long years, this dimly lit stone cell had been her prison.

Oh, she had tried to make it a home. The stone slab that had served her for a bed was covered in pillows and warm blankets. The walls were plastered with increasingly complex drawings, some in ink, some in charcoal, some in blood. The gleaming metal shelves held all one hundred and twelve dolls Uncle had gifted her, save the one tucked neatly into her backpack.

Those dolls stared at her, their tiny button eyes filled with accusation. She could never adequately explain to them why she had to leave most of them behind. How could she pick and choose between her only friends, paring their numbers down until one doll - and one doll only - would escape with her? It had not been an easy choice.

She left the room in perfect order, as though some day, she might return. Of course, she had no plans to do so. Much as the outside world terrified her, she could abide her captivity no longer.

Uncle had often warned her of the dangers lurking outside. He said that she must prepare for the worst, and so she had prepared herself.

As she finally - finally! - pressed her palms against the cold metal door that stood between herself and freedom, Scarlet could not help but wonder if that preparation would be enough.

It would have to be.

She shoved the door open with both hands - Uncle had deliberately left it unlocked, this time - and immediately ducked to the side, avoiding a strike that would have taken her head. She ran, but she knew she was not faster than the rolling metal monstrosity that had waited so patiently for this very moment. The construct folded itself into a ball, giving her just enough time to cast the short-lived summoning spell.

As her death rolled inexorably towards her, she drew on all the power she had painstakingly stored away. The storm atronach was not a creature she could bind, nor control - it had taken weeks just to accumulate enough power to summon the damned thing.

It was just as likely to turn on her as it was to attack her enemy. However, its strategic placement - directly in the path of the golden orb - guaranteed that the machine would attack it, just to get to Scarlet.

That was the construct's first, and last, mistake.

The atronach exploded into a storm of electrical fury. Lightning blasted the orb, sending it off-balance as the massive creature she had lured into the world struck out with its relatively solid 'arms.'

The orb wasn't quite finished, but by that point, Scarlet could really care less. She had downed the invisibility potion.

Now, she just had to make good on her escape.

Blackreach was a truly beautiful place, but she didn't have a lot of time to appreciate that fact: an arrow whizzed just past her right ear, while the clatter of something many-legged and _large_ made its way up the paved stone path towards her.

The falmer were blind, after all. Invisibility meant less than nothing to them.

Scarlet ran.

It was a mad dash through the darkness, but before long, the foreign shouts became more distant. She found herself hiding behind a large formation of rock. Being fairly confident that she had lost the elves somewhere in the cavern, she risked a glance around the rocks.

There, against the darkness, she saw a glimpse of it. A black-shelled bug, as long as she was tall, chittered far too closely for her liking.

Already winded, she offered her thanks to Lady Nocturnal for small blessings. If it weren't for the roar of the waterfall nearby, the sound of her aching lungs gasping for air would have definitely caught the monster's attention already.

She took a moment to look out at the cavern, resting her delicate, snow-white hands against her thighs. The view might have taken her breath away, if the long chase hadn't done so already.

Impossibly tall mushrooms glowed faintly. Blue, green, and even violet light shone against the high ceiling, sparkles dancing on the shiny rocks above her and reflecting on the massive lake below.

All throughout, stone formations rose, shadows against the darkness. Some were natural, jutting up from below in sharp spikes. Just as many were obviously made by man or mer, and it was plain to her that those ruins would be her path to the surface: most of them, after all, did breach the ceiling, piercing the glittering darkness with cold, hard, stone.

The clatter of the bug's tip-toes against the cave floor was not going away.

Of course, things wouldn't be so easy.

She gripped her dwemer knife in her left hand, gathering magic to her right. Daring another glance around the rocks revealed the chaurus ( _that_ was what the bug-creature was called) poking around the stones nearby. It couldn't seem to piece together where she had gone, stupid thing.

Creeping around behind it, she leapt suddenly onto its back and drove the knife between the shiny, chitinous plates that formed the creature's tough armor. The bug squealed under her, trying to shake her off as she pried it open. She held firm, though, and when she could see the goop that made up its insides, she poured fire into its 'belly.'

It screeched again, the smell of cooking meat filling the air. It thrashed, its death throes finally knocking her loose, but before it could retaliate properly, it went deathly still. Its many legs carried it sideways, and then down, onto the ground.

Looking around, she didn't see any trace of the thing's elven masters. Hoping that meant she had lost them for good, she set out.


	2. Chapter 2: Towers

**Scarlet Snow**

Chapter Two: Towers

By: Nekhs

* * *

Some time passed, before Scarlet felt safe enough to venture out into the open again: she found herself unable to shake the feeling that someone, somewhere, was watching her.

No one dared to show themselves, however.

Seeing no monsters in her path, she still kept low and quiet, barely breathing as she returned to the thin, paved road. She'd passed several buildings on her mad flight; surely one of them would take her to the surface.

Making her way towards one of the large stone structures may have been a mistake, however.

It stood to reason that in this shadowed underworld, every place that could offer even the smallest sanctuary had been claimed by someone - or something. In this case, she felt a strange tingle throughout her body, and instinctively, she threw herself to the side. The lightning bolt missed her by an inch; its passing made the little hairs on her arms stand on end.

The blast of raw electricity left a kind of trail, a blazing white line against the darkness that slowly faded. That path, then, would take her to something that wanted her very dead. Once again, Lady Nocturnal stood with her - the falmer who had chosen to attack her was unarmed, unarmored, and very much alone.

She'd never seen one before, though of course, Uncle had told her of them. The thing had wrinkled skin where its eyes should have been, and its nose was entirely misshapen, but otherwise it looked more or less like a ghost-white elf. It hunched over, though, its posture more like an animal than that of a truly sentient creature.

Of course, she took all this in as she closed the distance between them.

Fire exploded from her palm with a roar, providing a particularly deadly distraction, before he could cast another offensive spell towards her. The falmer brought his gnarled hands up, and a crystalline barrier formed before him, absorbing the brunt of the blast and deflecting the rest. It obviously took quite a bit of concentration to maintain, so she kept the pressure up as she walked forward, sacrificing speed for precision. One of them would have to give, but who?

When she stood a foot away from him, she stopped the flames. Darting forward with quick, sharp movements, she caught the creature by surprise, the knife in her left hand driving up, under his ribcage and into his heart. She held him close as he gasped his last, twisting the blade harshly, before ripping it free. When he was truly dead, she dropped him carelessly to the ground.

The books Uncle had made her study were entirely accurate on this point: the ward had not protected him in the least from physical contact.

Once again, she felt that sick sense in the pit of her stomach, the knowledge that something, somewhere, was watching her, measuring her. perhaps. It didn't show itself, but then - it didn't have to. She knew it was there, and she sensed that it was oh-so-aware of how its presence rattled her nerves.

She ducked into a small alcove carved into the side of the building, trying once again to see the searching eyes.

But no, there was nothing.

Scarlet took a shaky breath, and began her search for the entrance to the tower.

The street hooked all the way around a rather large protrusion of rock, but she saw the arch that marked the right and proper entrance just above. Rather than risk her chances while climbing, she instead circled around, following the stone-paved road and keeping her footfalls soft and light.

The archway was wide open and absent of any guardian - she took that as an invitation to walk inside. She paid no mind to the intricate carvings that marked these walls, nor did she particularly care how pretty the hanging lantern seemed. Scarlet kept her knife ready, her magic bubbling inside her, filling her up. She was almost certain someone, or some _thing_ perhaps, would oppose her. What a pointless waste of life - if they'd only let her by, she wouldn't have to end them.

An arrow pinged off the wall next to her, confirming her suspicions. How exactly a blind creature came to be an archer, Scarlet had no idea, but she was ready for him. Flame erupted in a pillar, starting under the falmer and engulfing him as he screamed. Sinking to his knees, he thrashed, trying to put the fire out by clawing at his own melting flesh.

Scarlet looked around.

This wasn't the way, she realized, annoyed all the more.

She took the falmer's bow while he writhed in agony on the ground. Uncle had made her read about all manner of weapons, and so she knew, more or less, how to operate such a thing. She knew she needed the arrows he kept in his thick, leather quiver, for example, and she also knew that the bow was one of the few _convenient_ means of transporting death across long distances.

She liked the idea behind the bow: if she managed to see - and strike! - a monster first, before it even saw her, then so much the better. She put an arrow clumsily to the bowstring, getting a sense of how it felt. Using the base of one of the tall mushrooms as a target, she took a few practice shots, finding the weapon's range and strength. She'd never held a bow before, but she could tell this one was not a good specimen, especially not for her. Its was hard to draw, being thicker than she would have figured. Still, it would do. By the time she'd used up all of the crude arrows, she was fairly confident she could hit a target, at least.

Feeling a bit less like she had _completely_ wasted her time, Scarlet padded back down the ramps that led up to that dais. She really could care less if the falmer lived or died, though with burns that bad, he would probably wish for death if it hadn't already claimed him.

He _had_ stopped moving, anyway.

That building was not the only one she'd seen, and so after she reclaimed the arrows she'd used, she made her way along the road, quieter than a whisper in the still air. Spotting something that looked rather promising in what appeared to be a kind of forest made of mushrooms, and noting a rather imposing figure on the road ahead, she ducked into the forest instead. Scarlet kept the bow at the ready, her knife hanging neatly from her belt, just in case. Her eyes were everywhere, looking for the tiniest of movements to betray a monster. The light here was bright enough to be almost blinding, after so much time in darkness, but she forced herself to peer through the brilliance of it all the same.

She would not be caught unawares again.

Another road bisected the mushroom forest, and this one led under a kind of bridge between two towers. She spotted movement on that bridge, and held deathly still, waiting. It walked with a slouch, its shape suggesting that it was another falmer. When it came to a stop, she drew the bow back. Taking a deep breath to steady herself, she released the arrow. It struck the creature, but as it fell forward off of the ledge it had perched upon, the falmer screeched the alarm. Another of its kind trotted down the ramp, carrying a thick, shiny, black shield and an odd sort of axe.

This one had gotten close enough, she could see him clearly in the light given off by the mushroom 'trees.' His head whipped towards her, pinpointing her by the creak of her bow, she supposed, as she drew back and loosed again. She aimed for his head, but the arrow pierced his shoulder instead - good enough for her. His pained cry indicated she'd done some kind of damage, and he dropped the shield, charging her with just the axe. She took the too-thick bow in both hands and swung it, hard, at the creature's head. He went down in a heap. For good measure, she slit his throat with her knife. Only when she was completely certain he wasn't getting up again did she move on, to investigate the tower.

There were no twists or turns to this building. The ramp led up, the bridge went over a small gap - there was only one way to go. This path was not nearly so clean. It seemed to have been worn into the cavern's edges by persistent travel, rather than architectural ingenuity.

She eventually did come across another paved road, and there, she paused a moment.

A kind of egg-shaped cradle greeted her eyes. Inside, it held an even larger construct than the one she'd fought for her first taste of freedom. This one looked massive, not to mention deadly, and Scarlet naturally decided that she did not want to encounter such a thing in a fight. She edged past it, giving it as wide a berth as possible.

Scarlet wandered, coming to a waterfall that drained from one lake into another.

Everything seemed to blend together, in her memory, such that she could not say for certain that she was not retracing steps she'd already taken, at least, until she found the road again.

Here she came almost face-to-face with another of the massive constructs, though it seemed almost asleep. All the same, she skirted around it, crossing a bridge that stood over the lake. She was sure she saw some kind of tower in the distance. Her attention was distracted by a massive globe, made from the same metal as the constructs, but woven together with painstaking care. It was almost blinding in its golden radiance; the orb glowed brighter than even the center of the mushroom forest.

She considered taking the stairs that led up to that monument, instead, but such a place was almost certainly well-guarded. Lady Nocturnal did not favor fools.

No, better to stick to the plan. She made for the tower she saw, determinedly.

The large double door she came to reminded her of the one that had sealed her room tightly shut. A quick, experimental shove, however, opened these doors with ease, allowing her to walk inside. She looked up - and up. It was dizzying, how far up the tower seemed to go, with no obvious stairs, ramps, or even ladders to climb - just empty space, farther than her eyes could see. She tripped over the lever, and the gears began to grind.


	3. Chapter 3: Open Sky

**Scarlet Snow**

Chapter Three: Open Sky

By: Nekhs

* * *

She screamed.

Of course she did - the ground had started moving under her!

This was not precisely how she had expected things to work. She had imagined a large staircase would lead her up through the densely packed stone above, but no.

No, instead, there came the most awful noise, a creaking and a whirring and a deep groan, as though the world was going to tear itself asunder. She clung to the ground, even while that very same ground pushed ever upwards, and all she could do was hope that it wasn't going to crush her against some impossibly high ceiling. That would be a particularly cruel joke.

It didn't, though. Right before it struck the ceiling, it ground to a screeching halt.

Scarlet could not wait to get off the platform that had taken her up. She staggered out through the metal doors. Landing on hands and knees, she proceeded to empty her stomach of everything she'd ever eaten.

This new room was large, she noted, bigger than the cell that had held her for so long, but much, much smaller than the caverns below. There was a large, bronze colored pipe that had burst open from the ceiling, leaking steam and warming the entire room.

The bedroll that lay on the ground, the long dead campfire, and the free-standing pot next to it all suggested someone had been here recently enough. They weren't here now, though, so she went to investigate the things they'd left. There was a barrel that contained salted meat, a backpack that had a potion and a necklace and a few other useless things. On closer inspection, the pot by the dead fire contained some mushrooms she recognized from Uncle's books as edible.

She munched on these dry mushrooms as she moved through another set of double doors to the next room.

Here was a wonder.

This room was dominated by what seemed to be some kind of immense sphere. Curiously, though, it looked as though parts of it were meant to move. Much, much larger than any of the constructs she'd encountered yet, this thing towered over her. It was large enough that whoever had built this place had installed a second floor to circle the top of the sphere, with openings for the ramps that climbed its sides. She had no interest in finding out what other kinds of technology could kill her, so she left _that_ alone entirely.

As soon as Scarlet found another exit, she took it, planning to get far, far away from the (probably) terrible creation she'd just witnessed. Whatever it was, she was certain the thing was evil, and just as importantly, it was _huge._

The short hallway led onto another platform, with another lever at its center.

Feeling certain that this machine would be the one to take her to freedom, she steeled herself for what was to come, and pulled this lever, as well.

With incredible speed, this new platform shot up its hollow tower. The noise, although still deafening, was less than the first rising platform had made - perhaps that was because this tower had seen more recent use? She didn't know, and she was fairly certain she didn't care.

She had told herself she was ready, but she still felt queasy after her rapid ascent.

None of that mattered, though.

A gate was all that stood between her and the wide open world, now. Her eyes went wide in awe, and she gripped the chilled bars with her bare hands. This was her first breath of truly fresh air in over a decade, and she cherished it, inhaling deeply. It was cold enough to sear her lungs, but she couldn't bring herself to care. Only when her fingers began to hurt from holding on to frozen metal did she pull back, tucking her hands under her arms to warm them.

The world above was incredibly bright to her sensitive vision. She let herself adjust to the light as she savored the incredible view. The tower she stood inside looked proudly out over an impossible distance; the mountain it was perched upon seemed to scrape the sky, and yet there was still more open air above.

There was no ceiling to the world any longer - she felt light-headed, as though she were going to float off into the fluffy pink and orange clouds of the evening sky. Far, far away, she saw tiny green spikes that she remembered as trees. Plants - plants that weren't some form of fungus! She knew them from Uncle's books, of course, but it was another matter entirely to see them for real. Sure, they didn't glow, but then, in the world above, they hardly needed to. Everything was so brilliant, here.

Another lever hung on the side of the massive gate, and she pulled it, watching in wonder as the bars swung open for her.

Nothing was stopping her from just - leaving. No prison would ever hold her, again.

She couldn't help herself. She ran forward, throwing herself at a huge pile of fluffy, white snow. She played in it, throwing it up in little showers of white powder, watching in wonder as it melted on her skin. It was so, so cold, but she didn't care.

Snow! She hadn't seen snow since she was little!

Honestly, she couldn't say how long she reveled in the magic of nature. It was long enough, though - the sun sank well below the distant horizon, and the cold became harsh, cutting through her thin robes as though she'd instead chosen to come up naked.

In that moment, she had a choice. She could make her way back to the tower. It would be safer to try to wait out the night underground. She knew that, of course she did. Uncle's books had taught her well enough how to survive in all manner of places. In cold places, shelter was vital to survival. She _knew_ that.

Unable to bring herself to return to her prison, even though it was the only safety to be found on the mountaintop, she instead tried to make her way down. It was a perilous climb though, and not one that she was truly prepared for. She slipped on a bit of ice buried under the treacherous snow, and that was it, really. As she rolled down the mountain, she cracked her head on a rock, and all she knew from there was darkness.


End file.
